German society, economy, and culture in the 14th and 15th centuries

Transformation of rural life

Despite the impressive advance of trade and industry in the later Middle Ages, German society was still sustained chiefly by agriculture. Of an estimated population of 12 million in 1500, only 1.5 million resided in cities and towns. Agriculture exhibited strong regional differences in organization. The more recently settled areas of the north and east were characterized by great farms and extensive estates that produced a surplus of grain for export through the Baltic ports. The south and west was a region of denser population, thickly sown with small villages and the “dwarf” estates of the lesser nobility. In the northeast the great landlords, headed by the Knights of the Teutonic Order, tightened their control over the originally free tenants, denied them freedom of movement, and ultimately bound them to the soil as serfs. In the south the heavy urban demand for grain chiefly benefited the larger peasant proprietors, who sold their surplus production in the nearest town and used their gains to acquire more land. The lesser peasantry, with their smaller holdings, practiced chiefly subsistence farming, produced no surplus, and therefore failed to benefit from the buoyant urban demand. The frequent division of the patrimony among heirs often reduced it to uneconomically small fragments and encouraged an exodus to the cities. On the other hand, landless day labourers who survived the Black Death in the mid-14th century were able to command higher wages for their services.

In southern Germany the strain of transition in rural society was heightened by the policies of the landlords, both lay and ecclesiastical. Confronted by labour shortages and rising costs, many landlords attempted to recoup their losses at the expense of their tenants. By means of ordinances passed in the manorial courts, they denied to the peasantry their traditional right of access to commons, woods, and streams. Further, they revived their demands for the performance of obsolete labour services and enforced the collection of the extraordinary taxes on behalf of the prince. The peasants protested and appealed to custom, but their sole legal recourse was to the manorial court, where their objections were silenced or ignored. Ecclesiastical landlords were especially efficient, and peasant discontent assumed a strong anticlerical tinge and gave rise to the localized disturbances in Gotha (1391), Bregenz (1407), Rottweil (1420), and Worms (1421). Disturbances recurred with increasing frequency in the course of the 15th century on the upper Rhine, in Alsace, and in the Black Forest. In 1458 a cattle tax imposed by the archbishop of Salzburg kindled a peasant insurrection, which spread to Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola. In Alsace the malcontents adopted as the symbol of revolt the Bundschuh, the wooden shoe usually worn by the peasants. They also formulated a series of specific demands, which included the abolition of the hated manorial courts and the reduction of feudal dues and public taxes to a trifling annual amount. On these fundamental points there was little room for compromise, and the outbreaks were stifled by the heavy hand of established authority. But the rigours of repression added fuel to peasant discontent, which finally burst forth in the great uprising of 1524–25 (see belowThe revolution of 1525).

The lesser nobility included two distinct elements. The imperial knights (Reichsritter) held their estates as tenants in chief of the crown. The provincial nobility (Landesadel) had lost direct contact with the crown and were being compelled by degrees to acknowledge the suzerainty of the local prince. The imperial knights had been extensively employed by the Hohenstaufen emperors in military and administrative capacities and were chiefly concentrated in the former Hohenstaufen possessions in Swabia, Franconia, Alsace, and the Rhineland. With the extinction of the Hohenstaufen dynasty, they lost their function and rewards as a nobility of service. The revenues from their small estates sank in purchasing power as prices rose. Caste prejudice prevented them from seeking an alternative role in trade or industry. Resentful of the decline in their fortunes and fiercely independent, they clung grimly to their remaining privileges: exemption from imperial taxes and the right to indulge in private war. They stubbornly resisted the persistent attempts of the princes to reduce them to subject status, and in Trier and Württemberg especially they were given valuable aid by the provincial nobles. For purposes of defense or aggression, the imperial and provincial knights combined freely in powerful regional leagues, usually directed against the local princes or cities. In the course of their chronic feuds with the cities, many knights became mere highwaymen. Many others, who had been forced to sell their estates or who were encumbered with debts, took service in Germany or Italy as mercenaries (Soldritter). In eastern Germany the knights, though equally unruly, were far more affluent. The knightly estate (Rittergut) was larger and produced a profitable surplus for export. The provincial knights sat in the assembly of estates, and taxation by the prince required their consent. They were therefore well-entrenched against the encroachments of princely power.

Urban society in 15th-century Germany was concentrated in some 3,000 cities and towns. About 2,800 of the total were extremely small, with populations varying from 100 to 1,000. Of the remainder, no more than 15 cities contained more than 10,000 inhabitants. In this restricted group three were preeminent. Cologne reached its peak in the 13th century with a population of 60,000 but sank to 40,000 by 1500 following epidemics, internal disputes, and expulsions. In 1500 Augsburg was the most populous German city, with a resident population of 50,000. Third place was held by fast-growing Nürnberg, which counted 30,000 souls. The social unity of the citizen body had been most marked in the 13th century, when the guilds joined the dominant patrician families (Geschlechter) in wresting the right to form independent city councils (Stadtrat) from the lords of the cities. In the 14th century the guild masters, methodically excluded from the councils by the patrician oligarchy, broke into open revolt in Speyer (1327), Strassburg (now Strasbourg; 1332), Nürnberg (1348), and elsewhere. In its economic aspect the ensuing conflict embodied an attempt by the guildsmen as industrial producers to free urban industry from the tight control exercised by the merchant patriciate. By 1500 the guilds almost everywhere had gained varying degrees of representation in the city council.

In the meantime the guilds themselves had become increasingly oligarchic and exclusive as the established masters restricted the entry of new members in order to reduce competition. The ascent of journeymen and apprentices to the rank of master was obstructed by the imposition of excessive fees, and in many guilds membership became virtually hereditary. In consequence, the journeymen began to associate in fraternities of their own to press their demands for higher wages and a shorter working day. The masters denounced the fraternities as illegal, compiled blacklists of leading agitators, and formed intercity associations to enforce low wage rates. The day labourers and casual workers outside the guild structure had no protective organization and suffered heavily in periods of economic depression. The surviving tax records of the German cities, though not wholly reliable guides, nevertheless suggest wide extremes of wealth and poverty. In late 15th-century Augsburg 2,985 of a total of 4,485 households (66 percent) were recorded on the tax rolls as exempt from taxation on the ground of insufficient means. At the other extreme stood the enterprising and prosperous business dynasties of the Fuggers and the Welsers. Not all wealthy citizens lacked public spirit, however, and hospitals, almshouses, and charitable foundations multiplied within the city walls. The spreading problem of mendicancy was combated by stringent legislation against able-bodied beggars in Esslingen (1384), Brunswick (1400), Vienna (1442), Cologne (1446), and Nürnberg (1447).

The decline of the church

The vigour and assertiveness of secular society in Germany was exercised increasingly at the expense of the clergy and the church. Among the upper clergy more than 100 archbishops, bishops, and abbots were temporal rulers. The prelates were usually sons of the nobility and did not allow election to church office to interfere with their aristocratic ardour for war and territorial acquisition. They were expert in the accumulation of benefices and were notoriously lax in the performance of their spiritual duties. Their influence was freely used to advance their kinsmen and partisans among the greater and lesser nobles, who dominated the cathedral chapters and ruled the abbeys. The monasteries were filled with monks and nuns who were distinguishable from the lay aristocracy only by a nominal celibacy. Among the secular princes, the rulers of Austria, Brandenburg, and Saxony wrested a right of appointment to a fixed number of bishoprics and lesser church offices from the papacy, which had been gravely weakened by the schism and the conciliar movement of the 15th century. All lay and ecclesiastical princes imposed heavy extraordinary taxes on the clergy. The steady invasion of the church by secular interests was also exemplified by the moral and material condition of the lower clergy. The Black Death of 1348–50 had decimated the ranks of the more dedicated priests, who ministered to their plague-stricken flocks instead of seeking safety by flight. The new recruits who rushed into holy orders were often self-seeking and spiritually unqualified. As the inflow continued, the problem of clerical unemployment and inadequate stipends attained greater proportions. Many were compelled by need to accept ill-paid livings. Others obtained no benefice at all and lived precariously as chantry priests or as itinerant chaplains. Their moral and intellectual defects were bitterly assailed by church reformers and by an increasingly well-informed laity. Many pious Christians, especially in the cities, began to turn away from the priesthood in their search for spiritual comfort and to seek relief in mysticism or in lay associations practicing a simple, undogmatic form of Christianity.

Trade and industry

The most impressive achievements of the German economy between 1200 and 1500 lay in trade and industry. German trade benefited from the Hundred Years’ War between France and England, which diverted northbound Mediterranean merchandise from the customary Rhône valley route to the eastern Alpine passes; from the fierce internal warfare between the Italian city-states, which weakened their supremacy in long-distance trade; and from the rapid economic development of “colonial” eastern Europe between the Baltic and the Danube. The northern German trade was chiefly based on staple commodities such as grain, fish, salt, and metals; but the southern German merchants, in their capacity as middlemen between Italy and the rest of Europe, had taken the lead by 1500. They combined trade and industry in the great Ravensburg Trading Company (1380–1530), which produced and exported Swabian linen and laid the foundation of the fortunes of the Höchstetter, Herwart, Adler, Tucher, and Imhof families. The most important independent concern was that of the Fuggers, whose founder, Hans Fugger, began his career as a linen weaver in Augsburg. The Fuggers’ accumulated profits provided capital for moneylending and banking, which they conducted with the aid of business techniques borrowed from the more advanced Italians. The wealth and prosperity of Germany, which Machiavelli remarked on in 1512, stood in sharp contrast to its political and military weakness, a disparity that contributed significantly to a profound sense of malaise and discontent on the eve of the Reformation.

Cultural life

In the absence of a strong centralized monarchy to act as a focus, German culture continued to be regional in character and widely diffused. The mysticism of Meister Eckhart, Johann Tauler, and Heinrich Suso, which commanded all men to look for the kingdom of God within themselves, flourished chiefly in the cities of the Rhineland, where lack of diligent pastoral care forced Christians to call upon their own inner resources. In the same region social and moral satire attained an urgent and vivid realism. Sebastian Brant (1458–1521), born at Strassburg, spared no class in his epic on human stupidity, the Narrenschiff (Ship of Fools). But it was in the thriving cities of southern Germany, as yet little affected by Italian humanism, that late Gothic culture reached magnificent heights in art, architecture, and sculpture. Albrecht Dürer, born in Nürnberg in 1471, challenged his generation with his evocative engraving “Melancolia I,” in which a brooding figure with closed wings sits idly amid a chaos of scientific instruments and meditates on the futility of human endeavour. In architecture the hierarchical elaboration of the late Gothic style maintained its ascendancy and even made a notable conquest in Italy with the construction of the great cathedral of Milan, begun in 1387. The sculptured carvings of Tilman Riemenschneider (c. 1460–1531) in the chapels and cathedrals of Würzburg and other Franconian cities revealed the anxiety, the deep piety, and the religious sensibility of Christian men engaged upon a spiritual pilgrimage that was to continue through the Reformation and beyond. His work was the pinnacle of a great flowering of sculpture, one of the greatest in German history.